The Introduction
Mortal Kombat had a rough outing during the 32-Bit era. Part 3 was exclusive
to the PlayStation, Ultimate 3 was Saturn exclusive, and the PlayStation was
drowned in a sea of knock offs and side-story games. In an attempt to bring
some life back into the series, Midway decided to pull an interesting move;
rather than release a trilogy of the first three games, they would simply
kit-bash all 4 arcade games together into one massive outing. While there
were some short-cuts made here and there, the only question that remained
was the obvious, "Which one is better?" Let the proceedings begin...

Evidence A: That whole Pixel Thing A lot of developers didn't know what to do with the Saturn when it came to transparencies. That is never more obvious than with Mortal Kombat Trilogy. Any sort of related effect has been created by using a half-empty checkerboard effect. While it's fairly obvious that it would be with Smoke, its surprising to see it on the Health meters. The outer edge and inner red bar are all under the checkerboard curse, and when played on S-Video cables its rather annoying. Super Move shadows and the Aggressor Meter trails also suffer from this. In the Saturn's defense, it actually does the character scans slightly better. More details are slightly visible, and the animation is more or less the same speed across both platforms. What IS interesting are some odd issues with stages. In this example, note the floor. The PlayStation version is at a different angle, with more details. There's also more compression artifacts visible in the Saturn version's sky. However, that taken into account, the overall resolution on the Sega machine is a tad better, giving a sharper picture regardless of the highly visible pixels. PlayStation brings a smidge more color to it. When all is said and done, it basically comes down to how adverse you are to checkerboards. For this round, it is a draw.

Evidence B: Staged Results Along with the already mentioned floor issues, there are some other oddities when viewed next to each other. Well take the foreground objects to task in this matter. Note the two middle most hooks in both scenes. The Saturn version has them closer to each other when the characters are furthest left. When the opponents move right, they are somehow further apart than the PSX version. This shows a bit more depth in the plane on Sega's deck.   Also of note are the missing floor lines. Notice where on the PSX's floor, there are cement line sections that do not appear in the Saturn. Other stages share similar nitpicks, which means we've reached another stalemate.

Evidence C: Load Times The PlayStation was always cursed with its load times when faced with 2D games. For this Battle Mode, I matched up the exact frame that Noob Saibot animates to ensure an exact comparison. What's revealed is that the Saturn gets to the actual loading process faster, but the PlayStation loads faster by a good 2 seconds. This varies within a few milliseconds depending on the character and stage, but the PlayStation pulls through this time. Point to PlayStation.

Evidence D: Taking Control Having played the PlayStation version extensively when it first came out, and only having a chance to first play the Saturn version when I did the review, this will be the biggest debate for most people. The PSX shoulder buttons allow for both block and run to be handled by an extra finger, but the Saturn pad is technically more loyal to the arcade game's layout (Block in the middle). This is especially true for those that have the controller on their leg and play mini-stick style (where you use fingers down to press buttons rather than your thumb). The PlayStation Pad can also feel just a tad mushy at times. The Saturn wins this round.

The Verdict
With the game developed by two different companies for each system, there were some obvious differences in opinion as to what to focus on.
on one hand, you have better colors and slightly faster loads. On the other, you have better controls and sharper images. Both games have huge
faults and glitches on their own systems, but truth be told, one doesn't really out shine the other. All it comes down to is which D-Pad you want to use.
This episode of Battle Mode ends with a tie.